The Sun Says: Labour’s lost it

TWELVE years ago, Britain was crying out for change from a divided, exhausted Government. Today we are there again.

In 1997, “New” Labour, shorn of its destructive hard-Left doctrines and with an energetic and charismatic leader, seemed the answer. Tony Blair said things could only get better, and few doubted him. But did they get better? Well, you could point to investment in schools and shorter hospital waiting lists and say yes, some things did – a little.

But the real story of the Labour years is one of under-achievement, rank failure and a vast expansion of wasteful government interference in everyone’s lives.

Who do YOU want to lead the country?

Nobody can doubt the dedication of Gordon Brown – or the love and loyalty of his wife Sarah, who delivered a moving plea on his behalf yesterday.

But nor can they disguise the failures of Labour in Government over the last 12 years, many of them embarrassingly laid bare by the PM’s own words yesterday.

Britain feels broken . . . and the Government is out of excuses.

Blair took office with bulging coffers, an invincible majority and weak opposition, and he and Gordon Brown could have worked miracles.

But they FAILED on law and order, their mantra “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” becoming a national joke. Knife murders are soaring. Smirking criminals routinely walk free in the name of political correctness, while decent people live in a virtual police state of snooping cameras and petty officials empowered to spy and to punish.

Labour FAILED on schools. Yes, facilities improved – but four in 10 kids leave those shiny classrooms still unable to read, write or add up properly. We are plummeting down international league tables for maths and literacy, but every year “grade inflation” ensures record GCSE and A-level passes to fuel Government propaganda.

Labour FAILED on health – spending billions on clipboard-ticking target managers instead of on frontline care.

Labour FAILED on immigration, opening our borders without any regard to the consequences. Illegal migrants and bogus asylum seekers poured in.

Labour FAILED the children they claimed to have made their priority. After 12 years of Blair and Brown, Britain is officially the WORST country in the developed world in which to grow up.

Most disgracefully of all, Labour FAILED our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving them to die through chronic under-funding and the shambolic leadership of dismal Defence Secretaries like Bob Ainsworth.

As our forces in two war zones suffered, the scale of Government waste at home was mind-boggling and tragic:

Billions blown employing a useless layer of public service middle-managers like those who condemned Baby P to die.

Billions more spent, insanely, making benefits more lucrative than a pay cheque – creating a huge, idle underclass for whom work is a dirty word. And all along the Government has had one overriding concern: Itself.

Blair and Brown’s puerile feud has long been a cancer at the heart of New Labour, their divisions often paralysing the country.

Labour’s driving ambition has not been to improve Britain. It has been to retain power at all costs – with no lie judged too great in its ruthless and relentless self-promotion.

They promised a referendum on Europe. They claimed they had ended “boom and bust”. They tried to con the public with promises of endless investment, when they knew they would have to cut.

At the 2005 election, we and our readers believed Labour had many failings but gave them one last chance over a lacklustre Tory party.

They have had that chance and failed.

That is a fact Gordon Brown cannot escape, for all his rhetoric yesterday – his rewriting of history, his absurd caricature of the “heartless” Tories, his tired promises to solve problems he has had 12 years to solve.

Britain needs a brave and wise Government to restore our self-respect, our natural entrepreneurship and the will of every family to improve its lot through its own efforts, without depending on handouts.

We need a Government that will cut the red tape strangling businesses, that will make affordable tax cuts to stimulate growth, that will reform wasteful public services.

 

We need a Government with a genuine will to win the war in Afghanistan and the commitment to give our forces whatever they need to do it.

This will not be a Government that merely talks the talk, as Labour has. It will ACT.

We hope, and pray, that the next Government will have the guts and the determination to do these things. And we believe David Cameron should lead it.

Between now and the election Cameron’s Conservatives must earn voters’ trust by setting out their promising policies in detail.

If elected, Cameron must use the same energy and determination with which he reinvigorated the Tory Party to breathe new life into Britain.

That means genuine, radical change to encourage self-improvers, not wasting time on internal party wrangling or pandering to the forces of political correctness. It also means an honesty and transparency of Government that we have not seen for years.

We are still a great people and, put to the test, will respond to the challenges we face.

The Sun believes – and prays – that the Conservative leadership can put the great back into Great Britain.

THE SPEECH THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN AT THE UN

Lt Colonel Allen West

About 62 years ago the world came together and established something that was very long overdue, the State of Israel. When one considers the travails of the Jewish people since the 7th century it should bring shame upon the face of the world. These persecutions began with their being forced out of the Saudi peninsula and the Levant by muhammad and his successors.

The horrors of the inquisition in Spain among other wrongs brought upon the Jews in early Europe followed. When we failed to learn from that lesson, the world would witness the supreme horror in Europe of the Holocaust. Finally, we learned the lesson. We made a commitment and established a Jewish homeland, fully recognized.

Now we face the resurrection of the original enemy of the Jewish people, a resurgent islamic fundamentalism evidencing itself in totalitarian, imperialist design. This time it has morphed itself using 21st century technologies still retaining a 7th century mentality, utilizing terrorism internationally to promote its perverse aims.

One of those objectives is the destruction of the State the world agreed to support in creating, Israel.

In keeping with previous traditions established by muhammad, the modern islamic warriors promote taquiyya, lying to promote islam. They also, just as muhammad, use the Treaty of Hudabiyya as a model to delay and deceive their enemies until they are ready to strike. Under Yasser Arafat some 200 agreements were never honored.

Why would we trust any word coming from the mouth of the psychopathic delusional leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The mad mullahs, insane imams, and combative clerics are again calling for the supremacy of islam, no different from earlier centuries.

Israel faces groups such as Hamas which in its charter commits to the destruction of Israel. They face Iran who has committed to destroying the Jewish state and driving its people into the sea. When asked to depart from southern Lebanon, Israel complied, yet they now face Hezbollah in the north. In Egypt the muslim brotherhood is complicit in enabling Hamas to receive materiel support and funding through the series of tunnels.

And there are those who demand more land be ceded by Israel and settlements halted? The end result will be a Country with the width comparable to the distance of New York’s JFK to LaGuardia airports. Each time Israel has given back terrain it has become a launching point for terrorist attacks.

We are dealing with an enemy that has no regard, nor respect, for negotiations, compromises, and certainly not appeasement. Matter of fact it is deemed weakness and only encourages them moreso.

I do not support any creation of a Palestinian state, to do so would be to create a terrorist state. There is already a state for the Arabic people residing in the region called Palestine, Jordan. If the Arabs can build an indoor ski slope in Dubai, they can resolve the issue of their Arab brothers and sisters. Instead, they use them as pawns in an international game of extortion and use the subsidies provided not for humanitarian gain but for more weapons, for jihad.

I do not support any division of Jerusalem. If I recall from history and the Old Testament, David, Son of Israel built Jerusalem and his son Solomon made it great. The muslim claims to Jerusalem are based upon a very contentious story concocted by muhammad, and of course the latter conquering of the city even by Salahaddin. One flag will fly over Jerusalem, the Israeli flag, never any other, certainly not a UN flag.

Lastly, we must move away from the antiquated world government organization called the United Nations. We recently saw what type “leaders” are allowed a stage before this body politic. It is time we create a new organization which is based upon Nations with like political structures, Republics and Democracies. I advocate Israel being part of this structure, perhaps an expanded NATO, but something with teeth, and principled member Nations. We face a dangerous committed enemy, we are all targets, not just Israel.

And if we fail to believe that last sentence, ask those who lost loved ones on 9-11 in America, on 3-11 in Madrid, and in the London bombings. We just dodged a terrible blow here in America, again, while promoting “Islam on Capitol Hill”. Funny, the attendees blamed their fear of reprisals for not having more persons participate. This on the same day, 25 September 2009, that a Jordanian illegal immigrant was caught sitting in a “supposed” car bomb and dialing up the cell number to detonate in Dallas.

Genesis Chapter 16, verses 11-12 states, “And the Angel of the Lord said to her (Hagar): Behold you are with child, And you shall bear a son, You shall call his name Ishmael, Because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against everyman, and every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”

Ishamel of course became the beginning of the Arab people….and God’s word is immutable truth.

In closing, there are battle lines clearly drawn, I know where I stand, and that is to support the State of Israel. The lessons of history have been learned by me and I offer one simple retort, “Not on my Watch”.

Steadfast and Loyal LTC(R) A B West

Liberal Lies About National Healthcare:

Fourth in a Series

by  Ann Coulter

09/09/2009

Only national health care can provide “coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job” — as Obama said in a New York Times op-ed.

This is obviously a matter of great importance to all Americans, because, with Obama’s economic policies, none of us may have jobs by year’s end. The only reason you can’t keep — or often obtain — health insurance if you move or lose your job now is because of … government intrusion into the free market.

You will notice that if you move or lose your job, you can obtain car and home insurance, hairdressers, baby sitters, dog walkers, computer technicians, cars, houses, food and every other product and service not heavily regulated by the government. (Although it does become a bit harder to obtain free office supplies.)

Federal tax incentives have created a world in which the vast majority of people get health insurance through their employers. Then to really screw ordinary Americans, the tax code actually punishes people who don’t get their health insurance through an employer by denying individuals the tax deduction for health insurance that their employers get.

Meanwhile, state governments must approve the insurers allowed to operate in their states, while mandating a list of services — i.e. every “medical” service with a powerful lobby — which is why Joe and Ruth Zelinsky, both 88, of Paterson, N.J., are both covered in case either one of them ever needs a boob job.

If Democrats really wanted people to be able to purchase health insurance when they move or lose a job as easily as they purchase car insurance and home insurance (or haircuts, dog walkers, cars, food, computers), they could do it in a one-page bill lifting the government controls and allowing interstate commerce in health insurance. This is known as “allowing the free market to operate.”

Plus, think of all the paper a one-page bill would save! Don’t Democrats care about saving the planet anymore? Go green!

(13) The “public option” trigger is something other than a national takeover of health care.

Why does the government get to decide when the “trigger” has been met, allowing it to do something terrible to us? Either the government is better at providing goods and services or the free market is — and I believe the historical record is clear on that. Why do liberals get to avoid having that argument simply by invoking “triggers”?

Why not have a “trigger” allowing people to buy medical insurance on the free market when a trigger is met, such as consumers deciding their health insurance is too expensive? Or how about a trigger allowing us to buy health insurance from Utah-based insurers — but only when triggered by our own states requiring all insurance companies to cover marriage counseling, drug rehab and shrinks?

Thinking more broadly, how about triggers for paying taxes? Under my “public option” plan, citizens would not have to pay taxes until a trigger kicks in. For example, 95 percent of the Department of Education’s output is useful, or — in the spirit of compromise — at least not actively pernicious.

Also, I think we need triggers for taking over our neighbors’ houses. If they don’t keep up 95 percent of their lawn — on the basis of our lawn commission’s calculations — we get to move in. As with Obama’s public option trigger, we (in the role of “government”) pay nothing. All expenses with the house would continue to be paid by the neighbor (playing “taxpayer”).

To make our housing “public option” even more analogous to Obama’s health care “public option,” we’ll have surly government employees bossing around the neighbors after we evict them and a Web site for people to report any negative comments the neighbors make about us.

Another great trigger idea: We get to pull Keith Olbermann’s hair to see if it’s a toupee — but only when triggered by his laughably claiming to have gone to an Ivy League university, rather than the bovine management school he actually attended.

(14) National health care will not cover abortions or illegal immigrants.

This appeared in an earlier installment of “Liberal Lies About Health Care,” but I keep seeing Democrats like Howard Dean and Rep. Jan Schakowsky on TV angrily shouting that these are despicable lies — which, in itself, constitutes proof that it’s all true.

Then why did Democrats vote down amendments that would prohibit coverage for illegals and abortion? (Also, why is Planned Parenthood collecting petition signatures in Manhattan — where they think they have no reason to be sneaky — in support of national health care?)

On July 30 of this year, a House committee voted against a Republican amendment offered by Rep. Nathan Deal that would have required health care providers to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program to prevent illegal aliens from receiving government health care services. All Republicans and five Democrats voted for it, but 29 Democrats voted against it, killing the amendment.

On the same day, the committee voted 30-29 against an amendment offered by Republican Joe Pitts explicitly stating that government health care would not cover abortions. Zealous abortion supporter Henry Waxman — a walking, breathing argument for abortion if ever there was one — originally voted in favor of the Pitts amendment because that allowed him, in a sleazy parliamentary trick, to bring the amendment up for reconsideration later. Which he did — as soon as he had enough Democrats in the hearing room to safely reject it.

If any liberal sincerely believes that national health care will not cover illegals and abortion, how do they explain the Democrats frantically opposing amendments that would make this explicit?

Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Slander,” ““How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Godless,” “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans” and most recently, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and their Assault on America.